Lyra's POV
Consciousness returned slowly, like swimming up through murky water. Voices drifted around me, muffled and strange, while my head throbbed with a pain that felt like broken glass grinding against my skull.
The ceiling staring back at me was all wrong. Stark white tiles. Harsh fluorescent lighting that made my eyes water. This wasn't my bedroom. This wasn't anywhere I recognized.
Fragments of memory began piecing themselves together. The abandoned road. Those beautiful, deadly flowers scattered like confetti across the forest floor. Purple petals that had seemed so innocent. The cloying sweetness that had made the world tilt sideways. My desperate flight through the trees. The moment my knees hit asphalt, palms scraping against rough pavement.
Then darkness.
